The advanced television systems committee (ATSC) standard used for terrestrial digital television (DTV) is based on single-carrier VSB modulation. ATSC mobile/handheld (ATSC MIH) standard is a mobile/handheld variant of the ATSC standard. A typical DTV receiver performs, among other functions, phase detection on the received DTV signal. In the absence of any additive noise at the input to a DTV receiver, a phase detector to determine an accurate estimate of the phase error in the received signal may be implemented based on the following equation:
  Phase_Error  =            I      -              Decision        ⁡                  (          I          )                      Q  However, in practical scenarios where noise is present in the received signal, phase detectors based on the above equation may not be able to provide an accurate estimate of the phase error. As such, an inaccurate phase detection resulting from inaccurate phase error value generation may be result in erroneous demodulation and regeneration of DTV signal.
Accordingly, it is desirable to develop and provide a phase detection technique for digital receivers that may be used to accurately estimate phase error in the presence of noise in the received signals.